Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Gama's Blood Crystal ❯ Center of the Eye ( Chapter 6 )

Gama's Blood Crystal

Chapter 6: Center of the Eye

Trunks, Vegeta, and Saria had been walking down the hallway for hours, yet they still hadn't encountered the Blood demon rhyme. Only the same stupid warnings about not taking the treasure of the Labyrinth, and then the Labyrinth Rhyme itself. On top of this, not every design had a message, and then of course, the designs themselves weren't always right next to each other. Saria could tell that Vegeta was getting annoyed at not having seen the rhyme yet and Trunks hadn't really spoken to her after he had caught up with her initially. And at that time it was more of a 'wait up' type of response. Well, at least he stopped glaring after awhile. Where the hell is that damn rhyme anyways? Why the hell won't it show up yet? Saria was starting to wonder if maybe she had been wrong about letting them know about having found the rhyme in the first place. She had been studying the walls out of sheer boredom for the past hour or 2 when she had realized that looking up at the ceilings wasn't gonna work. Absentmindedly, she noticed how well she was feeling. Amazing how I couldn't even move earlier, yet now I feel almost as good as new. Even back home, my recovery wasn't thisquick. What is itabout this place that has such an affect on me? And it's not just the healing or the blood demon for that matter."

Saria couldn't place this reaction of hers that had her feeling connected with this place. There was something here that almost called to her. But she wasn't Gama. They didn't work like that. That was the one thing her mother was adamant about. The Gama weren't hereditary. They were just a bunch of… outcasts with powers or something. But if mom didn't have powers, how come she was one of them? Saria shook her head. None of it made sense. The Gama were supposed to just be some kind of story! Then she remembered. Then again, so were the z-gang. How can they be real? Why are they even here? Maybe this is just some kind of hallucination or I'm in a coma or something. Two stories that I've known and loved my whole life, now are suddenly real and a vital part of my life?

Saria almost sighed as she looked up at the ceiling once again, looking for any sign of the rhyme. Suddenly she stopped. Wait a second… Saria stared intently at the ceiling, narrowing her eyes. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Vegeta and Trunks immediately noticed this. But she didn't care. She abruptly looked at the walls, then walked over to the one nearest her, standing but a few inches from it. She wasn't sure what to make of it. Hell, she wasn't even sure she knew what she was looking at. She touched the design on the wall, staring at it like there was nothing more important in the universe, and lightly ran her fingers along it. She looked up near the top of the wall, both her palms pressed against it in front of her. Then she tilted her head back to look up at the ceiling.

That's when she saw it. What had caught the attention of her subconscious. "For those who get out are the ones with our sight." She repeated under her breath. She took several steps back, looking at the same exact spot. Without realizing it, she started repeating more of the rhyme. "Why look if you can not see…" She looked down the hallway, staring at every single design as if it were one entire picture. "Look away now, you'll miss it. From the sky and the forests, the true way is written."

Saria almost laughed. "Of course! The sky and the forests…ones with our sight… Why the hell didn't I see it sooner?!" She could see Vegeta and Trunks were starting to get a little agitated because they couldn't see what she could.

Saria finally turned to them. "I know how to get us out of here."

They both looked at her in shock. "Nani?!"

"When the rhyme said 'Ones with our sight', they weren't just talking about seeing the way out. They were literally talking about an eye." They just looked at her, obviously not knowing what she was talking about, even tho Trunks was the only one who looked like it. She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Don't any of you have any sort of a brain at all?" Vegeta growled at her and Trunks looked indignant. But before any of them could say anything, Saria went on. "'Stone and sand is what you enter; a maze with no end has no center.' All the last line means is that there wouldn't be a center to this maze because it doesn't end. That's because this whole labyrinth is in the shape of a giant Eye. And the center is the entrance and exit to this place."

"How do you know this?!" Trunks asks in complete surprise.

Saria replies "The walls, the ceiling…Hell, the messages themselves connect together to form a giant map of the place. That's probably why we haven't seen the blood demon rhyme yet. Everything about these designs was carefully calculated, so that any Gama who was thrown in here could get out eventually. Nothing about this place is accidental or just for decoration. This entire place was completely done on purpose."

They both look at her in surprise. On purpose? But Trunks shakes his head at that thought and asks "Can you tell if there's more than one exit?"

Saria looks surprised. "There's only one way in or out of this place. If there were more, the chances of some outsider stealing their treasure and then escaping with it would be far too great."

"Oh. But then how come we all woke up in different areas of this maze?" Trunks wondered.

Saria looks at him. "All of you had to find each other?"

"No. All of us woke up in the same room except for you, Videl, and Krillen. And our room looked nothing like the one you woke up in."

Saria calmed down. "Are you so sure that you all woke up in different rooms? From the looks of it, Videl had been down here for a lot longer than you guys had been. She may have even shown up here at the same time as Krillen. And I came straight from a different planet. The portal that brought me here was probably used as a temporary door or something. After all, this place isn't completely power-proof."

"Actually, they both were missing a week before we appeared here. So it's possible. But if you can create doorways into here…" It suddenly hits him. "So that's why there are power dampers in here! So no one can escape unless you actually know what you're doing!"

Saria nods her head.

"But then why would they put the blood demon down here if it scared them so much? Did their guard dog get out of hand or something?" Trunks asks.

Saria shakes her head. "No. It wasn't a part of the maze at all. They must have dug him up or someone called him here and then it started killing them off. They even say that the creature is from hell and that it's a killer who drinks your blood for its food. I think the only reason why its down here in the first place is because this was the only place the Gama knew of that could contain the creature."

"But if it has power over the sand, then wouldn't that be a reason not to put it down here?" Vegeta states, rather than asks.

Saria looks at him. "They probably were too desperate to really think it through."

"Or maybe someone is helping this thing." He responds.

Saria and Trunks look at him. He was right of course. Saria had gotten that feeling ever since she saw it. How it survived all these years, how strong it was… "But if someone is helping it, there may not even be a point to finding the exit. The doors are probably tied to its life. Meaning we would have to kill it in order to unblock the exits."

Trunks hangs his head at this while Vegeta scowls. "Girl. Do you know how to find the next rhyme that tells how to kill the blood demon?"

Vegeta awaits her answer while Trunks looks up at Saria, who's looking back at the designs on the walls and ceiling. "I'm not sure. Those rhymes were most likely written right before the Gama set it loose down here. So it's probably only in places where its message won't screw with the map." But she continues studying the designs intently, once again running her fingertips along the designs.

Trunks, meanwhile, looks over to his father and asks him about Gohan and the others. Vegeta looks ready to hit him for asking, but then grunts out a response that actually comforted Trunks, surprisingly enough.

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It had taken her a little while, but she finally managed to figure out when the next rhyme would most likely appear. She told the other two and then they immediately started walking thru the maze of corridors. Along the way, she and Trunks had talked somewhat. She was actually glad that he did most of the talking, telling her some of the few things about his life that she knew were the normal parts, and also finally mentioning what all of their names were. That relieved Saria, she kept forgetting that they hadn't told her their names yet and had been forced to work around that. Which was especially fortunate when Trunks started telling her all about the wild things he did when he was younger; including winning the Tenkaichi Budokai (without the powerful part) and sneaking into the adult division. Saria actually had to refrain from laughing, for the first time in her life, at all those moments. Chibi Trunks had always been hilarious. That was part of the reason why Saria liked him so much. It was refreshing to meet someone so full of life when she had countless times given up on hers. And then as he grew up to be pretty insolent and always sneak off from his work, it just got her even more attached since his wild side wasn't just him being a kid. Despite herself, she was now starting to get really attached to him. He was even better in person than he was on screen.

Vegeta on the other hand didn't say much of anything. Saria had always known that he wasn't the talkative sort, so she wasn't bothered by that in the least. Hell, she was like that. What had worried her was if he had completely distrusted her and would demand answers about how she got there. And she didn't have those, so she'd end up having to tell them about her life, which she really didn't want. From the looks of it tho, Vegeta didn't seem suspicious of her at this point. And that was just fine in her eyes.

An hour later, they were all standing under the design containing the Blood Demon Rhyme, and Saria was reciting the last part of the poem:

"To kill the creature of blood and sand,

You must have lightning at your command.

Ice may freeze, but not for long,

Only the poison in the blood of one.

Lightning strikes sand to make a crystal death,

Combined with Ice, will send the Demon to its final rest."

Vegeta and Trunks look at her, but she still didn't know what it meant. So she just looked at them, before going back to the ceiling. She sighed. "I think it might mean that you can use ice to paralyze the creature temporarily. And that lightning or energy like that is what the blood demon's weak against." Saria had to keep from smiling when she realized the irony with that. Especially when Vegeta's and Trunks expressions mirrored what she'd noticed and they both started swearing in Japanese about not be able to use their powers.

Saria repeated that last part of the blood demon rhyme in her head, trying to figure out the something that kept tugging at the back of her mind. 'Only the poison in the blood of one'? Why would it go on about lightning being the way to kill it and then not tell you how to poison it? And how can you combine ice with lightning? Very puzzling. Somehow, tho, I keep getting the feeling that there's more to this rhyme than it's letting on. But what? 'Lightning strikes sand to make a crystal death, combined with ice'…'only the poison in the blood of one'…'you must have lightning at your command, ice may freeze but not for long, only the poison in the blood of one'… Saria was thinking really intensely, trying to figure it out.

…hmm… What did mom say about the Gama? That they have powers. Powers over… Her face paled, but Vegeta and Trunks were too busy arguing with each other over the situation to notice. That they have powers over sand, shadow, myst, ice, and lightning. The poison in the blood of one is in a Gama with Ice and Lightning for blood! She almost gasped at the next thoughts. Mother was a Lightning Gama! And she said my true father was an Ice Gama!

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Translations/Explanations:

~Nani = 'What', very informal and rude way of saying it (tho I'm thinking they mean it's slang) [pronounced = nah-knee]

~Chibi = 'Little', this is what you called a younger version of someone; "chibi chibi" even means 'small child' [pronounced = chi-bi]